


Crime Story

by beetle



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Noir, Conspiracy, Detective Noir, F/F, F/M, Future Scott Ryder/Reyes Vidal, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other pairings to be added, Past Relationship(s), Past Scott Ryder/Reyes Vidal, Police Procedural, Private Investigators, Reyder, Self-Defense, Semi-Hardboiled Detective AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 12:40:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11737233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: Life in Heleus City proves hazardous to yet another person’s health and it falls to Lt. Scott Ryder to solve the case. But not without getting re-tangled up with his estranged siblings, landing in the number one spot on the shit-list of every ambitious thug in the city, and butting heads with his unfairly irresistible ex, i.e.The One Who Got Away, with depressing frequency. Between all that and his captain riding his ass about all the unused PTO he’s accruing—not to mention that it’s been raining so hard for so long, anyone with any common sense has migrated south or started building an ark—Lt. Ryder deserves Olympic gold just for keeping his head above water.Chapter Summary:As so many crime stories do, this one begins with a murder. . . .





	Crime Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hotot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotot/gifts), [thewickedkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewickedkat/gifts), [stitchcasual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchcasual/gifts), [squiggly_squid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/squiggly_squid/gifts).



> Notes/Warning: So, Modern AU. Yeah, I stole the title. My attempt at some semi-hardboiled noir, with a bit of police procedural thrown in. (More Jonathan Lethem, ala _Gun With Occasional Music_ , than Dashiel Hammett. I don’t have the chops to imitate Hammett. _Yet_.)

 

**1\. The Crime Scene**

 

“Over here, Ell-Tee!”

 

Lt. Ryder squints into the chill, pissing-down spring drizzle, leaning wearily against the passenger side door of the sedan. Barely forty minutes since the first black-and-white unit responded to the one-eight-seven and, already, Cypress Grove Place is flooded with media outlets and gawkers. Carrion birds.

 

Sighing, Ryder absently pops a piece of nicotine gum into his mouth, making a brief face at the taste—like rancid, spearmint-flavored ass—and slams the door of the ageing Crown Vic hard enough that half the people in hearing distance start.

 

Smiling hard and unapologetic at every glare aimed his way, Ryder runs a hand over his damp, ginger curls, puts on his mantle of _Lieutenant_ —a hard-won game-face that’s taken several years to perfect and make habit—then ambles toward the waving uniform. The closer he gets, the more he has to look up to meet the kid’s wide blue eyes.

 

The name on his badge reads _T._ _MacGillicuddy_ , but Ryder’s inner-nerd has already dubbed the kid _Treebeard_. He’s six-seven, if he’s an inch. For some reason, Ryder finds that amusing and whimsical, and his sere and soured mood lifts just a bit.

 

“It appears the circus has come to town early, huh?” he greets Treebeard, shoving the gross gum between cheek and jaw with his tongue. The kid blinks, glances over at the media-blitz, then nods, pushing his uniform hat up his head, revealing thatchy, strawberry-blond hair. Despite their similar complexions and hair colors, Treebeard hasn’t got freckle-one, unlike Ryder, who’s liberally flecked from face to feet.

 

“Yes, _sir_ , Lt. Ryder, sir! We, um, tried to keep it quiet, but you know how fast bad news spreads in this Burg,” Treebeard says apologetically. Ryder’s grin is less hard and unapologetic, this time, but still probably not very comforting. “Plus, the vic being who she was. . . .”

 

“You all did your best, MacGillicudy. Between every mook with a police-scanner and too much free time, and this biblical-damned-flood we’ve been having for the past week, we’re starting at less-than-zero no matter how by-the-book and hush-hush we keep things.” Ryder sighs again and glances up at the sky, just in time for a fat drop of probably-polluted rain to land splat in his left eye.

 

It doesn’t faze him. That’s just how this week’s been going. Not to mention the thirty-eight and three quarters years before it.

 

“At any rate,” he mutters, blinking and eyeing the yards-distant tape outline, of which he can only see half, due to CSIs and their van being in the way. “When someone punches the ticket of the most high-profile mobster in a city like Heleus, the vultures are gonna circle, then land. After they tell all their friends, of course.”

 

“I guess,” Treebeard agrees, his painfully young and untried voice cracking. Ryder downwardly revises his estimate of the kid’s age from twenty-five, to twenty-one, tops. “I mean, she’s been kind of a fixture of Heleus’s underbelly for so long . . . I guess everyone just kinda figured she was bullet-proof.”

 

“Herself, included,” Ryder notes dryly, stifling a yawn and wishing to God he’d taken his put-off PTO this week, like Captain Shepard has long-since been “suggesting.” He’s not lazy or easily-daunted, by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, but he’d rather be riding a desk for a year than working the hellacious shit-show that’s going to blow up around the gunning down of Sloane Kelly . . . Heleus City’s answer to Al Capone. “Gimme the run-down of what’s happened since you arrived on-scene, MacGillicuddy. And talk slow.”

 

#

 

After listening to Treebeard’s semi-stammered recitation of events—with surprisingly little back-tracking and supposition, yet a _lot_ of keen-eyed attention to details—Ryder claps the kid on his broad, bony shoulder and thanks him. Makes a mental note to keep tabs on his career because that eye for detail and hesitation to jump to baseless conclusions are traits the precinct can always do with more of.

 

Now that the stage’s been set, and fairly well, Ryder makes his way toward the CSI van and the place where the vic expired. He can still feel Treebeard’s big, guileless blue eyes following him with more than a little awe and hero-worship. After all this time and seeing similar looks in so many pairs of eyes, it’s no longer unnerving or discomforting, merely bemusing.

 

Ryder huffs and prods at his wad of nasty gum, in hopes of getting it to release more nicotine, tar, and whatever addictive additives his body’s craving so relentlessly, and not just more of that mint-and-rancid-ass taste. He thinks he’s successful, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’s fallen prey to wishful thinking and self-delusion.

 

In the moments it takes for him to close the distance between the outer layer of uniforms and sawhorses, and the taped-off crime scene, the rain lightens noticeably. That tempts him into looking warily up, once more. Cloud cover is, indeed, moving out.

 

And _more_ cloud cover is moving swiftly in, right on its heels, bleak and lowering and grayer than Ryder’s tired, bloodshot eyes.

 

 _In another few minutes, it’ll be sheeting down again_ , Ryder supposes. He shivers a bit in his damp, charcoal-colored suit. Doesn’t even bother taking out his soggy pocket-square to blot his face. Tells himself he’s at the scene of a murder, not taking part in a beauty-pageant.

 

Making his way past sawhorses and uniforms, returning terse hails with equally terse nods, Ryder strides up the wet, unusually busy street. He doesn’t even glance at the tape outline drawn near the left gutter, or the attendant CSI odds and ends used to calculate any- and everything having to do with the CoD.  There’s a CSI not too far from the jury-rigged scene, staring at a splash of rain-diluted blood and making a pensive face. He’s the only tech not bustling to and fro around the cordoned off scene. In fact, he’s leaning against the back bumper of one of the city’s newer CSI vans with all the fancy “gizmos” that Captain Shepard had balked at the necessity of. Until the van and its gizmos had more than made up for the exorbitant price-tag.

 

Ryder approaches the leaning CSI, whom he presumes is the lead on this case. If, indeed, he _is_ the lead, then he's relatively new to the precinct and to Heleus City. Ryder remembers seeing the young tech’s file cross his desk on the way to Shepard’s. The new guy is well-recommended and oft-praised, diligent and meticulous. Some sort of prodigy, scuttlebutt has it. Ryder hasn’t worked with him, yet, but he’s heard good things. Enough good things that he’s cautiously confident that if _any_ CSI can catch some useful evidence before the storm really ramps up and washes it away, it’s Dr. Liam Kosta.

 

Ryder draws even with Kosta, firmly wedging the nasty-tasting gum between his cheek and jaw, once more. As always, he fights the ingrained urge to blow a bubble, even though the returns on such an investment are pathetic with nicotine gum.

 

The urge, itself, is one of many holdovers from a childhood that’d been less than idyllic, but had featured some moments that made for decent nostalgia. Many of those moments had involved bubblegum. To the point that even now, when gum-chewing is just a thing Ryder does to avoid a habit that’s been a bitch-kitty to quit, he still longs for the comfort of the _pink-sugar-fun_ taste and the loud pop of an epic bubble. . . .

 

Reining his wandering mind in with some difficulty—rain always makes him maudlin, makes him brood . . . which is a shame, since Heleus is one of the rainier cities in the Pacific Northwest—Ryder looks the new CSI over. He’s not tall, maybe five-eight or five-nine, and wiry. A few inches shorter than Ryder’s brawny six feet-even. He’s dressed in his waterproof gear, with a cap over his thick, wild hair, and goggles on his friendly, dark face. Ryder smiles, small and impersonal.

 

“Kosta. Whatcha got for me?”

 

“Bloody-fuckin’-mess, Lieutenant, that’s what,” CSI Kosta says, far too cheerfully for such a damp and murderous morning. The English accent, strident and thick, is a surprise that makes Ryder frown and furrow his brow.

 

He doesn’t like surprises. Even meaningless ones, like some damned kid’s accent.

 

He also doesn’t like mornings. Even when the sun’s shining and there _isn’t_ a dead mobster awaiting some sort of justice—the kind she’d so blatantly scorned in life—Ryder’s . . . just not a morning-person.

 

“ _Bloody-fuckin’-mess_ , huh? Is that a scientific term?”

 

Kosta snorts. “Probably _should_ be, for all the insanely messy homicides this city sees,” he says, shaking his head and peering up at Ryder through his water-speckled goggles. His eyes are squinty, but friendly. “Okay, so, we ain’t got much out the gate, sorry to say, but pathology and ballistics’ll be able to at least tell us _some_ concrete things, once they’re on the case. But there’s some preliminary facts we’re sure about now. Nothin’ especially helpful or direction-y—or maybe it is? I dunno, that’s more your lookout than mine, Lieutenant.”

 

“Just _Ryder’s_ fine. In the name of efficiency.” Ryder shrugs and Liam grins, wide and white.

 

“And I’m fine with _Kosta_ or _Liam_. I’ll answer to either, and a few other things, besides. Anyway, the preliminaries . . . want the good news first, or the bad news?”

 

Ryder’s right brow quirks and the right side of his mouth tics . . . neither up nor down, just to the side. “How ‘bout you surprise me, and don’t tell me which is which?”

 

“A man who likes to live dangerously—be still, my beating heart.” Kosta’s grin is ridiculous, now, and Ryder very nearly smiles, himself. “Okie-dokie, Ryder. So, from what we can tell, so far, the initial GSWs occurred somewhere else. We’ve got people scouring the Kelly property for the exact spots. But your lady mobster was shot somewhere that wasn't here—by an amateur, I’d guess . . . once in the thigh and once in the side, narrowly missing her gut, in which case she’d have likely bled out before making it off her property. As it is, that she made it this far down the road on a thigh-wound, well. . . .

 

“So, she made it off her property and away from the shooter, without being immediately pursued. Must’ve collapsed either from shock or blood-loss, right where we found her.” Kosta points at the outline and Ryder nods.

 

“Bled out?”

 

“Nope!” Kosta snorts again. “She must’ve been lyin’ in the road for at least an hour, from what we can tell, but it wasn’t blood-loss that killed her. It was the five slugs put in the back of her head.”

 

Ryder’s red brows lift halfway up his furrowed forehead, even as his mouth turns down in a displeased frown. For a few moments, he closes his eyes . . . makes himself simply accept the fact that his job just got twice as hard in less than two minutes.

 

“Okay,” he finally sighs. “Kelly gets shot on her property, staggers out into the road, and isn’t pursued right away. Collapses not half a block away from the security gates. She lays there for an hour or more, bleeding, but still very much alive. Then . . . someone who may or may not be the original shooter comes along and empties most of a clip into her skull.”

 

Kosta nods. “That’s about the size and shape of it, from what we’ve gleaned, so far, Ryder. And just based on the two vastly different styles of the shooters—amateur and emotional, then professional and cold-blooded—not to mention the gap between Kelly getting wounded and Kelly getting murdered, well . . . ballistics ain’t in _yet_ —and I’d _really_ appreciate it if you didn’t tell Vetra I was skirtin’ the edges of _her_ territory—but . . . _you’re_ very likely looking at _two_ different shooters, with two _very_ different motives. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, mate, but . . . your manhunt’s just doubled.”

 

TBC

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Hotot and TheWickedCat, for the numerous bits and bobs that added up to one helluva prompt. Thanks to Ghostofshe and Squiggly_squid, for being so freaking enthusiastic. And to stitchcasual, as ever, for existing with me, after a digital fashion. I seriously love you guys in a way that’s cuckoo-bananas, but 100% pure.
> 
> Come be obsessed with Reyder, with me, on [The Tumbles](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com) :-D


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